"If you haven't seen Cairo yet, you haven’t seen the world." say the old Tales of Thousand and One Night. The Arabian World's biggest city is full of culture, high minarets and oriental markets, but also full of exhaust emissions, noise and traffic.
Cairo is the home of pyramids, precious Pharaoh treasures and over 16 million people. This makes the "mother of all cities", as the Egyptians proudly call their capital, one of the most densely populated cities in the world. If you are able to overlook all the noise, dirt, dilapidating districts, traffic chaos and heat, you will discover a shrill multiethnic city with a vibrant life that never takes a break, with Muslim architecture with thousands of minarets, oriental bazars and a vast entanglement of streets. In peace lies strength - that's exactly what tourists in Cairo should bear in mind.
El-Qahira is Cairo's Arabian name - it translates to "the victorious". However, the city didn't remain entirely undefeated in its eventful history: in 116 A.D. the Romans built a fort here that came to be known as the "Babylon of Egypt". In 641 A.D., the Arabian commander Ibn el-As conquered the settlement and islamized it. Starting in the 16th century, the Mamluks made Cairo the Orient's economic centre. It lost its influence under Turkish rule, though. The origin of the modern Cairo lies in 1863, when the ruler Ismail saw to it that the city along the Nile expanded, following the model of some big European cities.
